So, it was actually three burst pipes over Christmas, not two, which we got sorted (temporarily) with an end-cap on the pipe. Thank you Super Mario. We'll get the rest sorted out when NI Water clean up our stopcock in the street, which, given the state of things, may be some time. Now we have no water at all, due to the Great Northern Ireland Water Fail. People lining up at leisure centres to fill buckets and flagons. Some places haven't had water for over a week. We got off lightly, to be honest --off yesterday at 11:00, theoretically on today at 10:00, and our gym up the road is fine for showers and toilets. It's things like washing hands/dishes/floors where you have to catch yourself and say, 'ah, actually, that's not working'. The temperature has shot up 20 degrees almost overnight in the Mighty Thaw --from minus 10C to plus 10C.

Amd I forgot to mention, before Christmas, slimmeroftheyea's triumphal performance as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals Only one of the best women's comic parts ever written. And she got big big laughs. And my Christmas prezzie to her --tickets to see Derek Jacobi in King Lear. We saw the live relay from the National Theatre of Rory Kinnear in Hamlet at the QFT and it got me all Shakespearean. But ... you know... Derek Jacobi. (I got allotmenteering gear and a Larousse Gastronomique, since you enquire)

We had a watermains burst on our road yesterday. No water all of a sudden without anyone telling us. My mother rater helpfully suggested that we should bring in some buckets of snow to melt if the situation lasted. Luckily, they got it sorted by evening, but not without making a huge sheet of ice on the road.I hope they get it fixed soon where you are. It sounds really grim.

Have been wondering whether you were caught in it. We've had two frozen pipes here, solved fairly easily.

Those are fabulous presents. I saw Jacobi's Hamlet back in the late seventies, he'd borrowed the stutter from his Claudius which was a bit confusing, but it was ace overall. We've been looking at what we want to do with the allotment next year, while we've been holed up in the snow. Larousse is a wonderful reference tool, I can't take too much of it at once, though, it's very ... authoritarian.

I do rather like Larousse's slightly snooty attitude to any cuisine other than French. You know, some convention someday, we should run an allotment panel. There's a fair few of us around, judging by my flist alone.